Afghanistan Quotes - Page 30

• The war in Afghanistan, the first war of the twenty-first century, shows the United States doing what it wants to do, not caring about who it antagonizes, not caring about the effects on neighboring regions.

  Tariq Ali

  War, Caring, Twenties

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.thirdworldtraveler.com. January 2002.

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• My favorite is when you go to Afghanistan and you meet the special forces guys, and they look like these heavily armed surfers. These guys are the best. You see guys dressed as full Afghans, but then wearing a Yankees hat.

  Robin Williams

  Yankees, Guy, Special

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• One of their major initiatives was getting all officers on Facebook. So the question is, why are these people who are there to train the Afghans being pressured to be on Facebook? Again, it sounds benign until you realize that the military's concern isn't the Afghans, it's convincing the American people that we should be in Afghanistan.Soldiers can put up pictures and say "See how happy the Afghans are because of our presence here." It's a way to directly influence the American people using propaganda.

  Michael Hastings

  People, Soldier, Realizing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.In my new book, I open with a quote from Donald Rumsfeld. In October 2001, he said of Afghanistan: "It's not a quagmire." Ten years later there are 150,000 Western troops there.

  Michael Hastings

  Book, Quagmire, October

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Johnny Apple, a New York Times correspondent, wrote a front-page story saying Afghanistan could be a quagmire and he was mocked and derided. What is certainly true is that all sorts of resources that would have been used in Afghanistan were diverted to Iraq. Would those resources have helped? Almost undoubtedly. Whether or not Afghanistan would be a peaceful nation-state had we not gone into Iraq I doubt. Afghanistan is going to be Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to make it something else.

  Michael Hastings

  Peaceful, Doubt, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The more I see of life in these 'undeveloped countries' and of the methods adopted to 'improve' them, the more depressed I become. It seems criminal that the backwardness of a country like Afghanistan should be used as an excuse for America and Russia to have a tug-of-war for possession.

  Dervla Murphy

  Country, War, America

  Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.53, The Overlook Press

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• The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it exists for three weeks and then it disappears into thin air.

  Isabel Allende

  Air, Three, World

  Interview with Laura Flanders, www.counterpunch.org. June 06, 2003.

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• When I went to Afghanistan in 2003, I walked into a war zone. Entire neighborhoods had been demolished. There were an overwhelming number of widows and orphans and people who had been physically and emotionally damaged; every 10-year-old kid on the street knew how to dismantle a Kalashnikov in under a minute. I would flip through math textbooks intended for third grade, fourth grade, and they would include word problems such as, "If you have 100 grenades and 20 mujahideen, how many grenades per mujahideen do you get?" War has infiltrated every facet of life.

  Khaled Hosseini

  War, Kids, Math

  "Khaled Hosseini, Kabul’s Splendid Son". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. May/June 2009.

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• Throughout the last century there were multiple attempts at giving Afghan women more autonomy, to change marriage laws, to abolish the practice of bride price and child marriage, and to enforce women to be involved in school. Every time, the reaction from the traditionalists was one of contempt and scorn and at times outright rebellion. I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Children, School, Thinking

  "Khaled Hosseini, Kabul’s Splendid Son" by Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. May/June 2009.

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• What NATO troops are doing in Afghanistan is to train, assist and advise Afghans, but they are actually doing the fighting. They are actually taking the responsibility for the security in their own country. And that is a great achievement, compared to what we saw just a few years ago, when NATO troops had to conduct the combat operations fighting the Taliban.

  Jens Stoltenberg

  Country, Responsibility, Fighting

  Source: www.pbs.org

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